Our departure date is quickly approaching for our full time, long term travel adventure. We’ve named it our “(re) Discover The World Adventure”. While we have a rough idea of where we will travel to, at least for the next 18 months, the rest is flexible.

This adventure, this indefinite road trip, has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. I have saved, scrimped and planned – for years. I’ve saved other’s blog posts, recommendations, and articles. I’ve jotted down thoughts and inspirations, all in anticipation of this travel adventure. This is a dream come true for me–once our daughter began University, we would embark on our ‘empty nest’ plan.

And now, it’s only days away. It’s seriously a ‘pinch me’ moment.

Can you tell I’m excited?

Our utopian plan did not happen as we envisioned…but that’s okay.

The first step was to determine where we wanted to explore. This was exciting. We were finally talking about the details. Where. When. How.

We sat down to Determine Our List. Our dream is to travel the world, slowly. When we first wrote out our RTW Living List, it was a mother-trucker of a list. Damn it was long, laughable really…I did mention we wanted to be frugal as well.

But, we moved on to turning the Dream into an Itinerary. It’s one thing to have your itinerary on a spreadsheet, but until you make the first booking, it’s still just a dream. We bought a map, opened up Excel and got down to planning a route.

Our idea of travelling for a year or two went out the window. We’re constantly reading about other people making a life of travel…what’s stopping us? Our two year idea opened up to the possibility of indefinite travel.

We talk about settling someday, but right now, we just shrug off that notion…there’s still too much exploring we need to do before we can consider that.

Then reality hit us. It was going going to cost money. A lot of money to do what we wanted to do.

We had a freak outas reality set in. Where was the money going to come from? What are the cheapest places to go? Who do we know to stay with for a few days here and there?

Some way, somehow, I wasn’t going to just be talking about it anymore. We would make it happen. Damn it. I wasn’t going to let money get in the way.

After alot more research, a plan was put in place.

But, just when we thought we’d made a decision, something surfaced and we’d start from scratch again. It was a like being on a carousel at top speed. I just wanted to hit the stop button. I was seriously getting dizzy. We couldn’t seem to make a decision to save our lives.

Something was brewing. Something that neither of us would have anticipated when we first started talking about traveling together.

We separated.

I took myself off the carousel and questioned everything I was doing in my life. I wasn’t happy. If anything, 2015 and 2016 were utterly miserable years and I felt life was blowing up around us, big time. I had to make some changes in my life, separate from Rich, so I dug deep and found the path I wanted to be on. One that made sense. One that made me happy. One that brought me joy.

After a lot of soul searching and many months of ‘I just want to bury my head under the blanket’, we came out the other side. We got back on track. We were in control again and making solid decisions. We began making bookings.

The dream lives on!

The first stage is our (re) Discover Australia road trip. Since we’re already living in Australia, it made sense to start our adventure here. That wasn’t always the plan. But life throws you curveballs and you learn to go with the ebb and flow.

We thought about taking “The Big Lap”, or navigating the circumference of the continent (as many tend to do), but after a lot of deliberation we decided to focus on the places we’ve always dreamed of exploring.

We want to spend our time wisely, see what we want to see, rather than spend weeks on end just driving along the coastline. Because, you know, Australia is a big-ass country and there’s a lot more to it than just pretty beaches!

Needless to say, it’s been a crazy ride just to get to this stage.

First of all, it’s not as simple as ‘pack our bags and go’ for a roadtrip like this.

Australia isn’t cheap and we know taking a road trip like this takes planning. We want to do it comfortably, and while we’re pretty spritely, we’re not spring chickens.

We needed to determine what to drive, what to take with us, and set a frugal budget so that we have the resources to continue exploring the rest of the world after this road trip.

We also need to run a business from the road.

We ideally wanted to travel around Australia in a campervan, but they are just too bloody expensive for what we wanted to do. When we started looking around seriously for a campervan, reality was crushing. To appease our spritely bodies for 10 months on the road, buying a campervan would be a good solution. It just cost an ungodly amount of money.

We went with Plan B.

We decided to use what we had instead: A five-year-old SUV, our camping gear, and our worldly experience to bring to the table as housesitters.

Now we are days from leaving The Treehouse, our nickname the rental house in which we currently reside, in sunny Sydney. The purge is in progress. We have most of our list checked off. We’ve taken care of the initial preparations for our road trip– the car is roadworthy, we’re getting what we need to live comfortably on the road, and we’re securing a few house sitting gigs along the way.

Now it’s down to enjoying time with our daughter before she leaves for Uni. Once she’s off and settled, we’re hittin’ the road.

See you on the flip side…

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About the author

Tara Marlow

Tara Marlow is the founder/writer/photographer/creative genius behind www.TravelFarEnough.com.
She's ditched the desk, emptied the nest and now she's embarking on a new adventure to find herself in the world, inspiring others, like herself, to do the same. She's now travelling the world full time.
Since March 2017, she has completed a 10-month road trip through Australia; Spent 5 weeks solo road tripping through New Zealand; She drove solo from L.A. to Chicago via Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe and Texas; She has spent time on the south coast of Iceland; She's explored various parts of the U.K.; She walked almost 800km across Spain, walking the Camino de Santiago; 3 weeks were spent discovering Japan; And now she's someone in the world, planning the next adventure (and capturing her breath, most likely!).
You can find Travel Far Enough on the web, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Website: www.travelfarenough.com
Photography website: www.travelfarenough.smugmug.com
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LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/marlowtara

I've ditched the (corporate) desk, emptied the nest and now I'm on a Worldwide Trek.

Since leaving Australia in early 2018, I've road tripped from the South Island to the North Island of New Zealand. Driven from San Francisco to L.A., over to Texas then up to Chicago. I've been to Iceland and the U.K. I've walked almost 800 km across Spain on the Camino de Santiago. I've spent time in Japan, returned to Australia briefly for a few housesits, then headed back to the U.S. and on to Canada (first time) for 2.5 months for more adventures.... And there's more wanders and more adventures planned...

I want to inspire you to take the leap to make changes in your life. Life really is too short to simply exist in your life.

Join the community and share your dream life with me. I'd love to help you get there.

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Travel Far Enough 2018. Made with an abundance of love, wine, coffee and swear words.